Do Days

by Vito J Racanelli

The first few weeks after it happened, I came home from St. Sebastian’s School and looked across the street at Steven's basement window. The last time I’d seen him, Steven burst out of that window, the glass exploding into an otherwise quiet June day. He was gone now, but I still expected him to do that each time I passed by. Steven was like that.

When the traffic on the expressway backs up so badly that the cars sometimes don’t move for days, the commuters give up on driving altogether and begin to walk. Some of the refugees head straight for Manhattan two or three miles away, and some head back into the safety of the suburbs, but others wander down our street in what was once an almost a fashionable neighborhood in Brooklyn. They bang on the doors of brownstones, begging for water or a toilet or places to plug in their phones, and that’s when Rachael and I know that it’s time to go scavenging through the abandoned cars, looking for whatever we can eat or drink or sell.

Charlie knocked the scuffed, mean-looking heel of her right Dr. Marten boot against the toe of the left. She knocked the shoes together in time with the swaying of the subway train, stopping only when the cars came to a slow, screeching halt.